


Asphodel

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missions Gone Wrong, Team as Family, Whump, broganes, come with me on a magical journey in which Kuron does not exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24052615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: Shiro had known, when Keith left for the Blade of Marmora, that the organization had some...concerning ideologies. Mission above the individual, and all that. But Keith had been insistent that this was the best choice for him, and Shiro had reluctantly let him go.He had just naively hoped they would never need to deal with the fallout.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Voltron: Legendary Defender Team
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688515
Comments: 60
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's back! :D
> 
> This fic is completed, barring a couple tiny edits, so I'll be posting chapters weekly while I try to get a head start on the 167 other WIPs that have sprung up in the last few weeks.
> 
> Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt: Missing and presumed dead

Kolivan had scheduled a meeting at the Castleship this afternoon.

It wasn’t often that Kolivan came himself to give them news or intelligence, but it wasn’t unheard of. The Blade of Marmora had managed to persevere this long due to secrecy and caution, and if Kolivan wanted to let them know about the latest updates in person rather than over an admittedly 10,000-year-old communications channel, Shiro wasn’t going to stop him. So when Kolivan informed them that he was enroute with important information that he preferred to deliver in person, Shiro dutifully joined Allura and Coran at the hangar to wait for him. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance had offered to come as well, but Shiro had turned them down. The three of them had been tinkering with the food goo machine all afternoon; supposedly Hunk was close to a breakthrough in making the substance taste like something other than “vaguely porridge,” so Shiro was content to let them continue and brief them on whatever Blade of Marmora news was important later.

Shiro was slightly disappointed but unsurprised to notice that it was only Kolivan, holding a small box, who disembarked from the Galra fighter parked in their hangar. Keith had yet to accompany Kolivan on one of these trips, and Shiro had been hoping to see him in person; he’d looked a bit run down in their last video call. Well, if Keith wasn’t going to come to them, maybe Shiro should try to get out to the Blade’s headquarters soon to make up for it.

“Kolivan, you said you had news?” And there was Allura, quick to the point, as always.

“I do. I wish I were here under better circumstances, but I felt you all had a right to know. Will the other Paladins be joining us?”

“No,” Shiro said, “They’re working on improvements to the Castle.” While it wasn’t technically a lie, Kolivan would usually catch him on fibs like that. Right now, though, he just nodded, as if he were distracted by something, and it put Shiro slightly on edge.

“Two quintants ago, a solo operative embarked on a mission to place explosives on The Starbreaker, the battlecruiser under the command of Warlord Nantol. He was having a private meeting with two of his commanders, both dangerous in their own right. The mission was a success; the ship was destroyed and with it, everyone on board. It was a great blow to what remains of the Galra High Command.”

“That’s great news!” Allura started, but Kolivan held up a hand to stop her.

“Like all battles in a war, it comes at a cost. Unfortunately, the operative was… He didn’t…” Shiro wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the Blade leader stumble over his words like that, and something cold and sharp settled into his stomach. “The operative did not make it back to his ship before the explosives were detonated. We only managed to retrieve his blade from the wreckage. It is customary, when possible, to give this to next of kin. I admit I am still unclear on how human family units function, but Keith referred to you as a brother, so I feel he would want you to have it.” At which point Shiro realized, somewhat numbly, that Kolivan was implying Keith was the operative that hadn’t made it back, and he was referring to Keith in the past tense, and Shiro very much did not want to look at what was in that box because that was going to make all of this real. When he didn’t move to take it from Kolivan, Coran did instead, cradling the box gently in both hands. Shiro barely registered Allura’s hand on his shoulder, shrugging it off before pulling his fist back to punch Kolivan in the face with his metal arm. The Galra could obviously see the strike coming from a mile away, but he allowed it, staggering slightly with the blow.

“You, you were supposed to…” Shiro couldn’t get the rest of the words out, though Kolivan seemed to understand what he was trying to say.

“All of the Blade of Marmora, Keith included, knew the risks of what we do. We are fighting a war, and I cannot guarantee the safety of every single soldier. The mission is greater than the individual.”

“Not that individual,” Shiro growled. “Not Keith.” He knew it was petty, claiming that Keith was more important than the other members of the Blade, but he didn’t particularly care right now. He turned on his heel, marching out of the hangar. He’d let Allura and Coran deal with everything else. Without realizing it, Shiro’s feet took him to the kitchen, and he stopped to hover in the doorway. How was he supposed to break this to the other paladins?

“Hey Shiro,” Pidge called, not looking up from where she was connecting wires in the guts of the food goo machine. Hunk and Lance were both perched on the table, several bowls in varying shades of green surrounding them.

“What did Kolivan want?” Lance asked through a mouthful of goo. And Shiro tried, he really did, but he couldn’t answer. He was the leader, he was the Black Paladin: he should be explaining what happened to them, but his throat was closing up and if he tried to speak now he was either going to cry or throw up. Luckily, Coran chose that moment to join them, the box with Keith’s blade still in his grasp.

“Paladins,” Coran said heavily, and the three of them looked up, straightening to attention at the tone. Looking at their faces, Shiro was struck not for the first time at just how _young_ the other paladins were. How young Keith had been. Not technically a child anymore; according to the conversion Pidge had come up with, he’d turned 18 a few months before he left for the Blade. Bonds with sentient robotic lions aside, the four of them had become child soldiers, dragged into a war they had very little to do with. They should have all been back at the Garrison right now, goofing off, pulling stupid maneuvers in the simulator, trying to see if they could drop water balloons onto Iverson from the roof without getting caught.

It wasn’t fair.

“What is it, Coran?” Shiro’s blood was pounding in his ears, and he honestly couldn’t be sure which of them had asked the question.

“Keith was,” Coran began gently, “Keith was killed on a Blade mission.” Shiro appreciated the bluntness of it. There was a clatter as the bowl in Lance’s hand fell to the ground

“Are they sure?” Pidge demanded. “Did they examine the body? What if it's a trick?"

“Ah. Keith...it was,” Coran fumbled for words, trying to find a way to delicately explain that _Keith blew himself up and there wasn’t anything left of him to examine_. “There was an explosion.”

Hunk turned slightly pale at that. “What’s in the box?”

“It's his Marmora knife," Allura said. "It was recovered from the wreckage and Kolivan brought it to Shiro."

"To us", Shiro managed to say. “I think he thought of all of us as a family, so…he’d want us all to have it."

"We won't let him be forgotten, Shiro." He looked at Allura through the tears starting to gather in his eyes, looked at her still in her pink armor, mourning all the people she had lost. And he believed her.

* * *

“We shouldn’t have let him leave.” It was Hunk who said it, but Shiro had a feeling each of them has been thinking it over the past few days. He wasn’t particularly surprised either when Lance burst into tears - all of them had been randomly sobbing since they'd gotten the news.

“It was my fault,” Lance said. “I came to him, I was concerned about how we had six paladins and five lions, and he told me not to worry because it would work out, and then he- If this was his solution, I never would have told him.”

“We should have reinforced that it wasn’t just about the lions,” Pidge said miserably from her perch on the back of the couch. “I mean, how many times have we needed a sixth person on the ground lately, even if there are only five lions?”

“I thought it was good for him,” Shiro whispered. “He was so upset when he learned about his heritage. I thought it would be good for him to be around Galra that aren’t loyal to Zarkon and the empire. But I just ended up losing him.”

“I probably didn’t help,” Allura murmured. “I’m not quite sure if he ever really believed that I had accepted him. And it’s my own fault for being so horrible to him, but…”

“He doesn’t trust easily,” Shiro agreed. He probably should have been comforting her, convincing her that Keith hadn’t thought that way, but he just didn’t have the energy. “Or, didn’t trust easily, I suppose.” And God, how Shiro didn’t want to force himself to think of Keith in the past tense.

But they were still fighting a war, and Voltron had to go on. Allura sent him a nod from across the room.

"Let's go over the new Intel we just got from Lotor's generals…"

* * *

_Two quintants ago_

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Keith muttered under his breath, swinging his blade through a seemingly endless string of sentries.

This was not turning out to be a good day.

 _Just set these explosives at key points in the ship_ , Kolivan had said. _Warlord Nantol is in a meeting with Karilak and doesn’t wish to be disturbed, so the ship is mostly manned by a skeleton crew of sentries_ , Kolivan had said. _Easy in, easy out, as long as you make it back to the hangar before the explosives detonate_ , Kolivan had said. And now here Keith was, the only hallway back to the hangar where he'd hidden his fighter completely blocked and to top it all off, one of the sentries had gotten in a glancing shot at his leg. It wasn’t fatal, hadn’t hit an artery or anything, but it hurt like a bitch and it was going to make running back to his ship hell. With his luck, the sentries had probably already alerted the warlord to an intruder and this was all going to be for nothing.

He finally, _finally_ , hacked through the last sentry, only for the timer on his wrist to buzz, helpfully informing him that he now had one dobash to get off the ship. One dobash to reach his fighter, which was down four more decks and another three hallways, before the entire ship exploded.

He wasn’t going to make it.

He panicked, just for a moment, before skidding to the left instead, hoping the escape pods on the Starbreaker were in the same place that they were on most of the Empire’s battlecruisers. If there weren’t any more sentries in the way, and if Warlord Nantol hadn’t been informed of the intruder yet, _and_ if he had the right access codes for the escape pods, he might get out alive.

There weren't any alarms or more sentries, and the escape pods were actually in the place he'd expected them to be. So far, so good. Keith nearly slid into the wall in his haste to get to the control panel, shivering with adrenaline as he punched in the access code.

The console flashed red. Access denied.

Well maybe he'd mistyped - his hands were still shaking - and entered the code slower, more deliberately.

Red. Access denied.

Every Empire vessel shared the same set of access codes for the escape pods. They had to, with crewmembers constantly changing assignments and shifting between ships. It wouldn't do for someone to punch in the last ship's escape code on accident, and the Blade made absolutely sure they updated their members on any changes they knew of.

Which meant, Keith realized as he painstakingly entered the code one last time, only to be locked out of the system, that Nantol had changed them himself.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

This was not the first time that Keith wished he had some kind of communication link with Pidge or Matt. One of them would be able to hack into the pods’ system in no time, but Keith didn’t have their skills. The timer gave another burst, three short buzzes: 5 ticks left. Keith growled in frustration and panic and shoved his knife into the console on the wall, which shorted out with a couple sparks.

The doors to the pod opened.

Keith spent a precious second just staring at it in confusion and disbelief before he darted inside, inputting the sequence for what he hoped would disable the distress beacon; he didn’t need to accidentally tell every empire vessel in the entire system where he was. It was then that he remembered his knife, still jammed into the panel outside. He spun away from the pod’s controls to grab it, but he was out of time; the Starbreaker blew up around him, the concussive force throwing him backwards and into the steering column. There was a sharp burst of pain in the back of his head, and then - nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

Hunk was crying in the kitchen, and he really wished he could stop, but this was his life now. He'd found the weird schtartik fruit that Keith had loved so much at the last market they went to, and of course he bought a bunch of it, but now he was tasked with actually cooking with it. And none of the rest of them even _liked_ it, but Hunk had made this bed and now he had to lie in it.

_“It’s so bitter," Lance had asked, "how can you even stand it?”_

_“Maybe he’s got some galra tastebuds?” Pidge suggested._

_“No, I honestly just think his palette is shit.”_

_“Shiro!”_

_“Keith, I literally watched you eat chili out of the can, without even heating it up first. Multiple times.”_

_“What, it was convenient.”_

"Is this a...human mourning ritual?" Allura asked as she wandered into the kitchen, looking on in concern as Hunk chopped up mounds of bitter fruit with tears in his eyes.

"Honestly, not really. I just. I needed something to do, you know?"

“I understand. I’ve found myself compulsively cleaning all of the training droids as if Keith is going to show up here and insist he needs to practice.”

"I always meant to send over a care package, you know? Some snacks and stuff. I got the impression the Blade was never really great about making sure things tasted good. But then I...never did. And I can't now."

"So you're making Keith's favorite fruit in penance?"

"Not really penance, I'm just- I just want to remember him, and this is how I decided to do it."

"Let me know when you finish with it," Allura said. "I'll have some with you."

* * *

Keith woke slowly, very confused about why he’d slept in his armor and why his bed was much harder and colder than it normally was. Also, now that he thought about it, he didn’t remember going to bed. In fact, he didn’t remember much of anything that had happened the last time he was awake. He squinted his eyes open, but had to close them with a hiss when the bright lights from wherever he was stabbed into his skull. What had he been doing? Why did his head hurt so much?

He let himself lie there for a few minutes, breathing through the pain in his head and the nausea in his stomach. When both seemed to recede, he tried looking around again to slightly better results. The room he was in was small, gleaming silver and purple and oh fuck, he’d been captured, hadn’t he?

No, wait. There were windows to his right with natural light coming in and a door to his left that looked like he’d be able to open it without much trouble, both of which would make for a pretty insecure cell. He managed to sit up a little, taking in the panels above him and oh. Oh, right. The Starbreaker. This wasn’t a cell; it was an escape pod.

He let his head fall to the floor in relief, immediately regretting it when the pain throbbed again. Keith reached up to gingerly touch the part of his head that hurt so much and his fingers came away crusted with dried blood. That probably explained why he couldn’t remember much about the actual explosion. He wasn’t bleeding anymore, so that meant he’d been out for at least a few hours, and he was concussed, so maybe he should just stay here for a bit. Sleep a little more and then figure out what to do when he hopefully felt less shitty upon waking.

It wasn’t the best plan, but it was _a_ plan, and Keith was asleep again only moments later.

* * *

When he next woke up, all he could think about was how dry his throat and mouth felt. It made sense, he supposed, since he'd been unconscious for some unknown amount of time. His head was still throbbing, but at least it hurt less than it did before. He forced himself up onto his hands and knees and crawled to one of the side panels where he dearly hoped the emergency rations were stocked. His luck hadn't run out yet - he tore open one of the bags and fished out a water pouch, though it took him an embarrassing minute or so to get the straw in.

He finished the water off faster than he probably should have, but he finally stopped feeling so dizzy so he counted it as a win, then levered himself all the way up to examine the console. Any hope that he'd had of radioing out to Kolivan was dashed as he stared at it. Completely shot, probably because they'd hit the surface of wherever they were with quite a lot of force.

And, as Kolivan had explained to him, the whole system was made up of uninhabited planets; that’s why Nantol had chosen this location, after all. There would have been no possibility of a nearby population noticing the Galra Warship in their sector, which, unfortunately, also meant that wherever it was he had landed, there would be no possibility of Keith finding intelligent locals with supplies and houses and a way to communicate with the outside world.

A rescue wasn't coming. He was stuck here. Permanently.

Maybe it...wouldn’t be so bad? It would be like a vacation. He’d been wanting a break for the past couple months, hadn’t he? Well, this was just…a really long break. Like camping. A really long, involuntary, off-the-grid camping trip, with no contact with another person, that went on...indefinitely.

Great.

* * *

It really wasn't a surprise, the past three movements or so, for Coran to find a Paladin or two hidden away in some corner, crying. It was a bit of a surprise, though, to find Lance crying in the training room, of all things. They'd all agreed using weapons while mourning was a bad idea, so most of them had avoided the room.

"I thought I would be ok," Lance said before Coran could scold him. "I was just doing some target practice. Nothing too strenuous or dangerous."

"But?" Coran prodded.

"I haven't been using the sword recently, because I wanted Keith to…"

Ah, yes. The broadsword had been useful, but it was unwieldy and hard to master. None of them were particularly adept at a sword, with the exception of Keith, so Lance had been trying to convince Keith to teach him.

"He actually had plans to come see us after his mission was done," Lance admitted in a whisper. "He told me but he wanted to keep it a surprise. I didn't tell anyone else. When Kolivan set up that meeting I just assumed it would be to drop Keith off with us for a few days. But it…"

"Oh, lad."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you."

Coran, not for the first time, wished that the lions had woken a few years later. Maybe they'd be worse off in the war, maybe Zarkon would have conquered more planets, but at least he wouldn't have to see a group of aliens far too young have to deal with the consequences of war.

"I heard Hunk is making some pie in the kitchen. Why don't you join him? I'll close down the training system." Lance just nodded, not bothering to try wiping the tears off his face before he left.

It wasn't fair.

* * *

Keith had been dreading this moment. He'd spent about three days in the relative safety of the escape pod, treating his head and leg with the medical supplies and slowly making his way through the stock of rations. The Galra version of shelf-stable food was even worse than he remembered, but it was what he had and he wasn't about to turn his nose up at it.

(And if a small part of him was hoping Kolivan would send a rescue mission, well, you couldn’t fault him for wishful thinking, right?)

But now he had to admit defeat. He would run out of supplies sooner rather than later, so he'd need to go out and find some. At the very least he needed water. He'd gathered all the rations left into a sort of sling he made from some of the bandages and swung them onto his shoulder. His leg still throbbed when he put any kind of weight on it, but he didn't have a choice.

He had been looking out through the windows of the pod to see a desolate, barren planet, but walking through it was even worse. He was simultaneously too warm from the sun beating down onto him and too cold from the wind tearing at him, and all around him was just...nothing. Rocks, dirt, more rocks. A weird plant-thing Keith thought might have been a cross between a tree and a cactus, but he couldn't try to cut into it without his knife (and what an idiot he'd been that he’d let his mom's knife blow up on an Imperial cruiser).

Minutes turned into hours. The sun set, rose, and then set again.

And Keith was still stumbling along through some alien canyon during the next sunrise. He had plenty of the food rations left but only about a cup of water. If he didn’t find a source of water soon, he’d be in trouble, but he’d also been walking for two planet cycles straight, and he wasn’t quite sure how many hours that translated to because the days here were shorter than they were on earth, but whatever it was, it was A Lot.

Despite Keith’s best efforts, there was a limit to how far he could push himself. Still no water in sight, he finally had to give up and made his way to a cave in the cliffside. It would at least give him some shelter from the wind. He’d drink a mouthful of his remaining water, get some sleep, and regroup when he woke.

The further he went into the cavern, the more the sound of the wind outside cut off. Everything was dark, the only light a soft, pinkish glow from some kind of luminescent moss on the cave walls. Keith shuffled in between a couple of stalagmites that would at least give him a modicum of protection - he mentally kicked himself again for leaving his knife behind on the Starbreaker, feeling exposed and vulnerable without some kind of weapon. Resting his head on his knees, he was struck by how similar this place was to the cave where they’d found the Blue Lion so long ago. If he thought about it hard enough, his mind almost supplied the sound of the groundwater nearby.

Wait.

He wasn’t imagining that, was he? Keith was nearly positive there was water running somewhere behind the cliff wall he was leaning against, so all he had to do was find it.

The plan “find water by following the sound of it” had seemed simple enough, but with the twists and turns and blocked areas in the cave system, it took significantly longer than he’d expected. By the time he actually laid eyes on it he was exhausted, his legs giving out on him by the side of the pool. He should boil the water, he knew he should, but it’s not as if he had any wood to start a fire. And besides, he was on an alien planet, who knew if boiling the water would even do anything?

He tugged off his gloves and took a cautious sip out of his cupped hands. It tasted fine, cool on his parched throat, and he allowed himself a few more handfuls.

This was an improvement, at least. Sure, he was still stranded on an uninhabited planet with no hope of rescue, but now he had water, and several more days worth of food if he rationed it out.

And it was nicer to listen to the underground stream lull him to sleep than the unforgiving wind outside.

* * *

Shiro had started to think of time in terms of “days since we lost Keith.” Pidge was aware of this, and also aware that this was really fucking unhealthy, so she, Lance, and Hunk had taken it upon themselves to try to cheer him up. They weren’t particularly successful - Hunk’s stress-baking could sometimes get a little nostalgic smile out of him, but that was about it. So maybe it was a good thing that Matt was video-calling them while she and Shiro were playing a game of Killbot Phantasm on the bridge. Shiro’s heart clearly wasn’t in it; Pidge had beaten him three games to zero so far.

“Hey, Pidge. I need you to look over some logs for me.”

“Sure thing,” she answered, focusing on shooting fireballs at Shiro’s character, “I’ll put it in the queue.”

“No, Pidge, this is important,” Matt said. “This is urgent and I need you to look at these logs and confirm these codes for me immediately.” Pidge sobered a bit and shared a glance with Shiro as she turned away from Killbot Phantasm toward the computer screens; Matt had certainly gotten more serious since being captured by an alien race and joining the rebels, but it was still rare for him to be this grim. If he said it was important, then she’d trust him.

“Ok, so this was sent out about a month ago from a battlecruiser, ID 864-Θ-98-Ξ. At the end, the ship is registering high levels of heat and loss of structural integrity. Several hull breaches and then the log stops. It must have been destroyed. Maybe an ion cannon? Or hell, I don’t know, maybe they ran into a star. Something with power and heat destroyed the ship.”

“What about the codes before that?”

Pidge squinted back at the logs, finding the string of symbols Matt must have been referring to buried in the rest of the sequence. “One escape pod was jettisoned manually a couple ticks before the ship was destroyed.” She turned to look back at her brother, his eyes wide with urgency.

“You’re sure.” It wasn’t really a question, but she nodded anyway.

“What’s going on, Matt?” Shiro asked over her shoulder. “You already know what these logs say, so why did you need Pidge to confirm them?” 

“I just. You know sometimes, when you want something so bad, you see things that aren’t there and it starts to cloud your judgment? I wanted Pidge as a second pair of eyes. I wanted to make sure before I told you.” 

“Matt?”

He took a deep breath, and then a tentative smile formed on his face. “Those were the logs from The Starbreaker.”


	3. Chapter 3

“The Starbreaker launched an escape pod?” Shiro asked as Pidge leapt out of her seat with some ill-formed idea of taking her lion and finding Keith _this instant_ , but Matt held his hands up.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s Keith; it could have been anyone on the ship.”

“But it could be Keith,” Pidge said. “And we can’t _not_ look for him!”

“Of course we’re going to look for him, but Matt’s right. We need to make sure we don’t get our hopes up just yet. Pidge, can you call the other Paladins and the Alteans? At the very least, we need some kind of plan - just flying aimlessly through space isn’t going to help us find him.” Pidge must have sounded a bit panicked when she called the others on the intercom, because Lance, Hunk, Allura, and Coran all raced into the bridge slightly out of breath.

“What is it, are we under attack?” Hunk gasped. Lance had put on half of his armor, and Allura was already gripping her bayard.

“There’s a...development,” Shiro started, but then faltered. Matt seemed to notice, and took over the briefing easily. Another change - Pidge was proud of him for becoming such a leader, not that she’d ever admit it.

“Hey, guys. I asked Pidge to run some logs we got off an Empire server recently. It’s a whole bunch of data for ships all throughout the Empire, and one of them stood out to me. I had Pidge confirm and well, long story short, there’s a chance Keith might have survived.” There was a lot of shouting after that, but Allura managed to speak over Lance, Hunk, and Coran’s jumbled exclamations.

“What do you mean, Matt?”

“We can’t be sure it’s him yet, but according to the logs, one of The Starbreaker’s escape pods was launched just a few ticks before the ship was destroyed. Going by the fact that there wasn’t anything else in the data about that pod sending out a distress beacon, it was either damaged by the explosion or the person using the escape pod didn’t want anyone to know they were out there. Someone like, say, a Blade of Marmora agent who couldn’t make it back to his own ship.”

“Coran, hail Kolivan.”

“Already on it, Princess!” The window to Matt minimized as Kolivan appeared on screen, looking slightly concerned for the interruption.

“Paladins. To what do I owe this unexpected communication? I’ve an important matter to attend to.”

“Kolivan,” Allura greeted, “we have reason to believe Keith might have survived the explosion on the Starbreaker. One of the escape pods was jettisoned just before the ship was destroyed.”

“This is excellent news, but I’m unsure of what you want me to do about it.”

“Uhhh, help us go look for him?” Hunk suggested.

“I do not have the resources to undertake a rescue operation based on evidence this circumstantial.”

“I know the Blade is stretched thin right now,” Shiro reasoned, “so wouldn’t having an extra operative back in your ranks be in your best interests?”

“Keith used the phrase once, I believe it was ‘wild duck chase’? Just because one of the escape pods was launched does not mean Keith survived. Any number of other people could have launched that escape pod.”

“But Keith was the only one who would have known the ship was about to blow up,” Pidge countered.

“Paladins. I understand you wish this news to mean that Keith is alive. I do, as well. He was a valuable member of the Blade, and one that we lost too soon. But I have undertaken rescue missions such as these before, and they never end the way one would hope. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Kolivan, please,” Shiro pleaded, “if that is Keith out there, we’ll need all the help we can to find him.”

“I’m sorry Paladins, but my answer is no. I wish you luck.”

“You know what? We’re going to find Keith on our own, and we’re going to bring him home, and you can just - you can go fuck yourself,” Lance snarled, slamming his hand down on the button to end the call. There were several ticks of silence, before:

“Shit, Lance,” Matt breathed. Pidge had honestly sort of forgotten the call to him was still connected. “That was beautiful.”

“Oh my god I just said that to Kolivan,” Lance whimpered. “He’s going to send Blade assassins to kill me in my sleep.”

“Honestly, I’m pretty sure you just said what all of us were thinking, and if Kolivan gives you any shit for it, he’ll answer to me,” Shiro said.

“And me as well,” Allura agreed, with the hard edge in her voice that reminded Pidge every once in a while that she’d been raised basically as a warrior princess. “We’ll simply look for Keith ourselves.”

“I’ll help,” Matt said. “Can you open up a wormhole for me? This will be easier to coordinate if we’re all in one place.”

* * *

Shiro had never felt more useless than he did while listening to Hunk, Pidge, Matt, and Coran all discuss escape pod trajectories and vectors. Sure, he was a pilot, and he was pretty good with physics, but hearing the four of them try to find his little brother by calculating where exactly The Starbreaker had been when it exploded and which pod Keith had taken and how much force the explosion would have exerted on the escape pod and what the gravitational field of this or that moon would do to it was making him feel lost. He guiltily tried to tune out the discussion after Hunk’s suggestion that Keith wouldn’t have input any coordinates at all if he’d been injured (which, yes, was the most likely scenario for why he hadn’t made it back to his own ship, but he still didn’t like the idea). And despite Kolivan’s assertions and what Shiro had told Pidge, he wasn’t ready to consider the idea that this might not be Keith at all.

Lance seemed to have the same mindset as he did, because there was a little nudge to his human arm.

“We’ll find him, Shiro. He’s gonna be ok. He'll probably just be annoyed at how long it took us to get off our asses and actually go look for him."

After about an hour and much more math than Shiro was prepared for, they’d narrowed the probable pod trajectory to four planets and three moons. Coran and Matt outfitted the lions with BLIP-tech drones, and the five of them sped off to plant the sensors. 

And then there was more fucking waiting as they all pored over the data. He got it, there were seven sets of information to look through, but the longer they sat here, the longer it took to find Keith.

He was suddenly regretting how often he'd told Keith that patience yielded focus. That was some bullshit advice. He didn't need focus right now. He needed to find his baby brother.

When Coran finally looked up from the console, Hunk, Pidge, and Matt clustered around him, Shiro's heart sank all over again at his expression.

“There’s...nothing. Keith isn't on any of those planets.”

“Shit," Matt said. "I’m sorry guys, I shouldn’t have - I thought this could be Keith, I thought he could have been ok. This is exactly the situation I was trying to avoid.”

Shiro looked at them, saw the hope dying in all of their faces, and decided to hell with that. "No. Keith didn't give up looking for me, so we're not giving up on him. Can we try again?"

“Maybe we got the pod trajectories wrong,” Hunk said, moving back to the console. “Maybe there’s a flight path we missed that put him on a different planet.”

“Or maybe the logs were wrong,” Matt said, dejected. “I mean, the ship was being destroyed when it sent out that information. Kolivan was right. This was a waste of time and I just got everyone’s hopes up for nothing.”

"Or maybe it's Thaseryix!"

"Coran. Thaseryix is millions of light years away in that direction," Pidge replied, "how would he have gotten there?"

"No, I think I understand." Allura looked up from where she'd been poring over data with Hunk. "It isn't Thaseryix exactly, but it's like Thaseryix, look." She waved a hand at the console and a map of one of the planets came to life in front of them.

“It's this probe from Xini. It isn’t just that it didn’t return Keith’s signature; it didn’t return anything,” Hunk explained. "Unless it's a completely lifeless planet, something with the atmosphere or the magnetic field might be messing with the BLIP tech sensors."

"So there's a chance Keith could still be on that planet-"

"Xini," Pidge interjected.

"-and the sensors just didn't pick him up?" Lance asked.

It was a chance. A minuscule, improbable chance that Keith made it onto that one single planet, was still alive, and just wasn't picked up by the incredibly sophisticated Altean technology developed for the express purpose of finding and locating specific lifeforms.

But it was a chance Shiro was going to take.

"Let's go down there," he commanded, already making his way toward the Black Lion's hangar. "Let's find Keith."

Pidge and Matt had calculated the pod's likely landing spot based on time and the planet’s rotation, and Shiro was incredibly proud of them when their prediction was spot-on. He could feel everyone's excitement at seeing the pod through the Paladin bond. But he could also sense the dread when they collectively realized the state it was in.

“Shiro,” Allura began gently as they got closer to it, “the pod looks like it took a...hard landing.” And she was right, of course she was right. There was a giant groove where the craft had plowed through the planet's surface, and the only way Keith would have piloted that badly is if the controls were jammed or he were unconscious. _Or he was already dead_ , his mind supplied, _too injured to survive the trip_.

“Well, let’s go look,” Hunk said with obviously false cheer. The comms had gone down when they entered the atmosphere - an annoyance for communications but at least a confirmation that the BLIP-tech would have likely malfunctioned in the same way. They were silent as they all got out of their lions; Shiro took a minute to brace himself and the others before wrenching the door open, convinced for a moment that he would smell the telltale scent of decay, see his baby brother's corpse on the floor of the pod.

The pod was empty. 

Pidge and Hunk immediately began looking at the systems but the thing was completely shot. Even the emergency drive, the Galra equivalent of the Black Box, was just spitting out gibberish. A dead end.

“Umm guys?” They followed Lance’s gaze to the reddish brown stains on the floor along with wadded up used bandages tucked into the corner.

“Pidge, can you," Shiro didn’t even need to finish the sentence before she was already there, using her armor’s system to analyze it. Luckily their short range scanners seemed to be mostly unaffected by the planet’s atmosphere.

“So the good news is that, unless there was another half-human-half-galra on board that ship, it was Keith that took this escape pod. The bad news is that’s Keith’s blood, which means he was injured.”

“It isn’t a lot of blood, and he was clearly well enough to apply medical care,” Shiro said, trying desperately to stay positive. “And now at least we know that it was Keith that made it off the ship. We just need to find him."

"With no tech," Hunk muttered miserably at his side. 

"Well, ok, but he was injured, and traveling on foot he couldn't have gotten that far," Lance said. "So you're Keith, and you're on a random planet and you're hurt. What do you do?"

"All the water and food rations are gone," Allura said from where she was inspecting the side panel of the pod, "so he must have been thinking clearly enough to grab supplies."

“Which also means he couldn’t have been too badly injured, if he was able to carry everything," Pidge reasoned.

"He’d try to find a source of water first, I think. He lived in the desert, he knows how important it is to keep hydrated above all else," Shiro said. "Let's do some scouting; the planet's not that big, if we split up we should be able to cover most of the ground we need to. We'll meet back here in a varga. Pidge, can you take a quick detour and get far enough out of the atmosphere to let Coran and Matt know what's happening? Maybe they can rig up some kind of long range scanner that works with Xini's atmosphere."

The others immediately went back to their lions to follow Shiro's orders, which on one hand was good because hopefully they'd find Keith sooner rather than later. But on the other hand, it meant Shiro alone with his thoughts.

"This is fine, Black." He wasn't sure which of them he was trying to reassure but it wasn’t working for either of them. "We'll find Keith, and he'll be perfectly fine, and we'll just take him back to the Castle with us and everything will be ok." Black grumbled under her breath at him, and Shiro got the feeling she was upset that she no longer had a strong enough bond with Keith to find him. “It’s ok. We’ll get him back.”

Except five dobashes before their designated meeting time, Shiro and the Black Lion were still scouring the planet’s surface for any sign of Keith or a body of water with absolutely no luck. Why did Keith have to land _here_ , of all places? A barren, desert planet, and he’d already been here for a month. With no water or food to be found, Keith’s chances weren’t good.

Maybe one of the others had found him, and they’d be waiting at the rendezvous point and everything would be fine. Maybe Allura had used Blue’s sonar cannon to find him, or Keith had seen the Green Lion flying above him and signalled down to Pidge, or maybe Coran and Matt had figured out how to get the castle’s long-range scanners to pick him up.

Or maybe Keith hadn’t made it after all, and this whole thing was for nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Keith had survived the onslaught of sentries on The Starbreaker. He’d survived the explosion. He’d survived the pod crash landing on this miserable planet. He’d survived his search for water. All so he could die by sheer, excruciating boredom.

Irony was fucking delicious, wasn’t it.

In a way, this was so much worse than living at his desert shack had been, because at least then he’d had the mystery of the Blue Lion’s energy to keep him occupied. But here? He had nothing. He almost wished the planet was full of terrifying, man-eating monsters because at least then he’d have some kind of excitement every once in a while. But the most dangerous thing he’d encountered so far was a sort of hyena-like creature that he’d been able to scare off by throwing a rock at it. And those damn, fucking chipmunk things that kept stealing his supply of seeds, one of the few edible things he’d found on this hellhole.

Bastards.

And now to top it all off, Keith was going insane, because he kept hearing someone’s voice calling his name. He had been trying desperately to get some sleep as his thoughts chased each other in circles, lying on his back by the underground pool and lightyears away from anyone that should have known who he was. This was obviously just a figment of his imagination.

Except Keith was still really bored, so he might as well check it out, right? If it was his imagination, well he was already going mad from the lack of stimulus. And if it wasn’t…

He’d avoid that train of thought for now. No use getting his hopes up that Kolivan had sent someone after him.

So when Keith wandered into the main cave opening and literally ran into another person, he was a bit surprised. Someone’s hand shot out to grab his arm and keep him from falling on his ass; he only got flashes of blue and white armor in the edges of his vision before whoever it was had grabbed him into a hug. This was either a really, _really_ impressive hallucination (like seriously, A+ brain, kudos) or somehow _Lance_ was standing in his cave and shouting in his ear.

“You’re alive!”

Keith was still coming to terms with the fact that Lance was actually here and he wasn’t alone anymore, so his response left a little to be desired. “Uh. Yeah?”

“Oh shut up you bastard,” Lance laughed with absolutely no heat to it. “We thought, I mean Kolivan brought us your knife and he said, we thought…”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t think anyone would interpret it like that.”

“What? No, don’t apologize, it’s just,” Lance squeezed him a little harder, and though it shoved part of Lance's cuirass uncomfortably into his stomach, Keith found he really didn’t mind, “you’re here and you’re alive and you’re ok and...wait,” Lance leaned back, holding him out at arm’s length and Keith was instantly missing the contact. “You - did you think we knew you were alive and just left you out here?”

“Well, the Blade doesn’t recover lost members and I wasn't sure what Voltron was up to or if you were busy, so...”

“You asshole!” And though Lance was shouting at him again, his voice reverberating loudly on the cave walls, he’d also dragged Keith back into a hug, so it was probably fine. “We were incredibly busy, if by busy you mean busy _mourning_ you for the past month!”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’, he says.” Lance shook his head fondly, knocking his helmet gently against Keith’s temple before pulling him toward the cave’s opening where Keith could see one massive red paw waiting for them. “Anyways we’re going back to the Castleship, where Hunk is probably going to make you a giant feast - I think we’ve still got some of that weird fruit from Valdex-5 you really like - and while he does that, you’re going to take a shower.”

“Forgive me for prioritizing drinking the water over bathing in it," Keith said even as he imagined how glorious it would be to finally wash the sweat and grime off his skin.

“Oh wait, before we head back to the Castle, do you have anything you need to grab? You know like stuff you had here. Obviously you didn't have your knife but was there anything else?”

“Yeah, Lance, now that you mention it, I can’t leave without the spear I made out of a stick and a rock that manages to fly straight about 10% of the time. I got really attached to it.”

“You’re being sarcastic?”

“Yes.”

“Hey man, I’m just making sure. You’ve got a knife collection, I don’t want to curb your weapon-related enthusiasm.”

“I do not have a _knife collection_ , I have like, four knives.”

“Right, you have multiple knives, hence a collection of knives, also known as a knife collection. Glad we cleared that up.” They were almost to the Red Lion now, her head dipped low to let them into the cockpit, and Keith was only slightly embarrassed when he began sobbing. Lance stopped in his tracks and looked over Keith frantically, and Keith tried futilely to reassure him.

"I'm fine," his voice cracking as he tried to laugh and cry at the same time. “You're here, and I thought I’d be stuck here and I just, I’m really glad you found me."

"You're not hurt? There was blood in the escape pod."

"I had a concussion and a blaster wound to my leg but they're pretty much healed up at this point."

"So this is just happy relief crying, right?" Lance checked. “No terrible hidden injuries or anything? Ok, then I can handle this." Lance pulled them all the way into the cockpit, then settled them on the floor and let Keith just bawl into his arms. Red’s warmth was a welcome comfort, still familiar after all this time, and it was cathartic, finally letting go of the chokehold he'd had on his emotions for the past month and letting another person worry about everything. Lance's hands were rubbing up and down Keith's back, starting to work on the muscles sore from sleeping on the ground, and he was vaguely aware of Lance humming softly, a tune that he recognized but couldn't name. It was nice.

God, he'd missed other people.

Keith wasn’t sure exactly how long it took to cry himself out, but when he finally surfaced he noticed lance was crying, too.

"We missed you," he said simply. "Also here," he shoved a water pouch into Keith's hands, "we don't need you to get dehydrated after all that." And Keith took it gratefully, because _water that didn't come from an underground creek, holy shit_.

“Are the others here, too?” Keith asked as he drank.

“Oh shit, they are, and we’re about ten dobashes late for the meetup already. You managed to crash land on the one planet in this system where the atmosphere disrupts all communication and most scanners, so we haven’t been in contact. I found you, though, so they can’t be too mad about us being a little late.”

* * *

Shiro hated this entire planet. None of them had found even a trace of Keith or a source of water. Hunk was next to him, positing theories about how maybe the species that lived here had managed to adapt to not need water or got it some other way, and all Shiro could think about was his little brother, surviving an explosion, injured, slowly running out of the stock of water from the escape pod until he died of thirst. What would they do, then? Would they try to find his body and bring him back to earth to bury him there? Kolivan had mentioned Galra funeral rites, would Keith have wanted those? God dammit, they were too young to be writing wills.

“Stop being so morbid,” Pidge muttered at his side. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking about it, too. We can’t both be thinking it, it’s bad luck.” Shiro snorted at her, but his response was cut off by the Red Lion landing in the open spot in their little circle. Now that Lance was back, Allura wanted to draft new plans with Pidge to spread out their search and Shiro felt he should be helping them out, so it was Hunk that noticed first.

“KEITH!” Shiro turned to look so fast he might have given himself whiplash, but Hunk was already storming up the Red Lion’s ramp and engulfing Keith in a hug. From what he could see past Hunk, Keith looked slightly worse for wear: thinner than the last time they’d seen him, tired, worn, but in one piece and alive and _safe_.

Keith didn't seem to mind when Hunk's hug went on for several minutes, nor when both Pidge and Allura had inserted themselves into his space, Allura pressing her face into his hair and Pidge whacking him in the arm, all of them trying not to cry. Lance slipped past them on the ramp with one little nudge against Keith's shoulder, making his way toward Shiro. He was smiling, an easy carefree smile Shiro hadn't seen in about a month.

"You did good, Lance," Shiro managed, wanting to wait his turn and get Keith to himself for a few moments. Selfish, he knew, but he also didn't particularly care.

"It was mostly Red," Lance admitted. "I think she can still sense him a little - once we got close enough she just banked down on her own. I thought for a second she was going to take us into a cliff."

"He's ok?"

"Yeah Shiro, he's ok. Considering everything he's been through he's in really good shape, actually. I don't think he'd object to us doting on him a little, though."

"Oh he's not going to have a choice about that. I won't rest easy until I know he's wrapped up in at least four blankets."

"I can see Hunk already coming up with menu ideas from here," Lance agreed. “I might even let him use my skincare stuff. You know, if he wants it. Actually that’s a lie, he’s using it whether he wants it or not.”

Hunk finally released him and Shiro watched with concern as Keith stumbled, slightly out of breath

"Hunk just squeezed him a little hard," Lance gave a murmured assurance next to him, "he's fine." Keith bypassed Lance (Shiro supposed they'd already had their own moment to reunite) and flashed Shiro a sheepish smile, which Shiro took as an invitation to yank Keith into his arms, still worried when Keith slumped tiredly into his hold.

"Hi."

"I am never letting you out of my sight again."

"Missed you too, Shiro."

Keith felt chilled through his Marmora uniform, but Shiro could also feel him breathing, his chest expanding against Shiro's armor, warm puffs of air on his neck. There was something surreal about it, having physical evidence that Keith was right here, safe, alive, whole, when he had been half-convinced this whole day (God, had it only been a day?) was a dream. He wondered if this was how Keith had felt when Shiro miraculously returned to Earth, afraid to let go for fear that the body in his arms would disappear.

Shiro would feel a hell of a lot better once they got Keith safely ensconced in the castle, but Lance was right. He'd survived everything the universe could throw at him so far and come out the other side. Right now, though, Keith was really only in danger of falling asleep standing up, and as much as he wanted to let Keith rest he’d be a lot more comfortable back at the castle.

"Let's get you home, bud.” No one seemed to complain when Shiro kept an arm around Keith's shoulders to lead him into the Black Lion; there was just a sniffle behind them before Hunk started crying again.

"I'm sorry, it's just really dusty out here."

Shiro felt just the slightest bit self-conscious for how quickly he was herding Keith up the ramp, but not enough to actually slow down. He just really wanted to get Keith into the lion where it was safe, alright? Keith seemed to get it, smiling and nudging Shiro’s side as they made their way into the cockpit. There was an irrational stab of fear he tried to stamp down as Keith broke away from him to touch the console fondly.

"You could fly, if you wanted,” he managed. “I'm sure Black wouldn't mind."

"Nah. I'm more than happy to sit back and relax and let you do all the work,” Keith said, leaning against the back of the chair.

“Let’s go home.”

* * *

Shiro had insisted on a full medical scan and bustled Keith into the infirmary the moment Coran and Matt had stopped openly weeping on him. Coran had pronounced him "surprisingly healthy," which Keith tried not to take as an insult. Just a few vitamin deficiencies and some cream that was supposed to help get rid of the scar from the blaster wound on his leg. Keith had then taken an embarrassingly long time in the shower (though at least half of that time had been trying to figure out what most of the bottles Lance had forced on him were actually for).

Later, there was warmth and food and company, lively conversation at dinner that Keith didn't really participate in. Sure, he tried to listen to the five or so topics flying around him: Hunk and Lance discussing whether Arusians would make good soccer players, Matt and Pidge recalling something their dog on earth used to do, Shiro, Allura, and Coran making plans about Lotor's involvement in the Coalition. But mostly Keith was content to let their voices wash over him as he stuffed his face with Hunk's cooking. He was probably eating way too much considering he'd barely had anything on Xini but he couldn't really bring himself to care. The night ended a bit abruptly when he nearly fell asleep in a bowl of pudding and Shiro bundled him into bed, going so far as to tuck him in like a little kid and Keith didn't really have it in him to complain.

Barely three vargas after he'd heard Lance calling his name found Keith in his old room and drifting on the comforts he swore he was never going to take for granted again. Warm blankets. Food and drink on demand. The silky red pyjamas Lance had found in the back of Keith’s closet. A mattress. _Climate control_. He was just about asleep when the door to his room hissed open and Keith lifted his head to see Shiro hovering in the doorway. Keith had wondered if he still had that habit - he’d caught Shiro checking up on all of them in the middle of the night a few times before he left for the Blade. Usually, Shiro would cover for his embarrassment at being caught in the act by reprimanding Keith for still being awake. But this time Shiro wasn’t leaving, and it was then that Keith noticed the pillow he was clutching in his left hand.

Smiling blearily in understanding, Keith shuffled back toward the wall to give Shiro some room in the bed. Keith had done this exact same thing their very first night in the castle. Afraid that he’d wake up to find everything had been a dream and he was back in his lonely little shack, he’d clambered into Shiro’s bed instead and spent the night there.

The beds weren’t quite big enough for two people, but Keith found it even easier to relax like this, sinking down quickly toward sleep. Shiro’s steady breathing was a reminder that he could actually sleep deeply tonight, unafraid of something attacking him or those damn chipmunk things sneaking into his cave. He fell asleep without realizing it, only to wake up what felt like seconds later to find all of the other paladins, Matt, and Coran piled into his room.

“Mmph?” he asked eloquently.

“Sorry, Keith,” whispered Allura, “we didn’t mean to wake you.”

It took Keith’s jumbled mind a bit to realize they’d all basically had the same idea Shiro did, but… “Don’ think you’re all gon’ fit.” He saw Pidge, Lance, and Hunk all trade slightly manic grins at that, and if he'd been more awake he could have anticipated what happened next.

"Slumber party in the lounge!" Hunk yelled. Keith barely noticed they’d moved before Lance and Pidge were tugging at his arms, urging him out of bed and then racing down the hall. Keith stumbled along after them, Shiro’s hand on his elbow the only thing keeping him vaguely upright, while Coran darted ahead of them to get several mattresses put down on the lounge floor. He must have fallen asleep while walking, because one moment they were all in the hallway, and the next thing Keith knew he was lying on a pile of pillows.

“Are you sure this is alright?” Allura asked. “No one would begrudge you if you wanted some sleep in an actual bed after everything.”

“Been sleeping on rocks. ‘S fine.” And honestly, it was. His head was resting on Shiro’s shoulder, and someone’s arm - Lance, he thought? - was draped across Keith’s waist. He was pretty sure he was using Matt and Pidge as footstools, but neither Holt seemed to care. Hunk and Allura were somewhere near his head discussing the proper sleepover accessories in low voices, and he could still hear Coran zipping around and dropping off more pillows and blankets. After the extended isolation of the past few weeks, having several bodies this close was a breath-taking relief.

“Hey Keith, what do you want for breakfast tomorrow?” He tried to tell Hunk that anything was fine; hell, even the food goo would be a large improvement from his diet on Xini, but it mostly came out as an incoherent mumble. There was a slight shifting to their pile as several people laughed at the response and Keith considered grumbling back at them, just for a moment, but he was warm and comfortable and surrounded on all sides by people that cared about him so he let it go. Just this once.

“I think he’s out, Hunk.” There was a lingering chuckle in Lance’s voice as he tightened his hold around Keith. That was nice.

“He always used to ask for French toast at the Garrison,” Shiro said from underneath him, his voice vibrating pleasantly under Keith’s ear. “Think you could recreate those little French toast bread pudding things you made back on Eskriavar?”

“Hm, yeah, I’ll need to substitute in a different type of flour, but that should work.”

“I’m staying for breakfast,” Matt piped up from where he was reading something on his tablet, and if anything happened after that, Keith was too dead to the world to hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance: shows up 15 dobashes late to the meeting with ~~Starbucks~~ Keith


	5. Chapter 5

By the time he woke up, it was light enough that it had to already be what passed for “noon” on the castleship. Keith thought he was alone at first, until he registered someone (Allura, he thought, going by the light scent of perfume) braiding his hair and Pidge using his arm as a pillow.

“You awake?” Pidge asked without looking up from her tablet.

“Sort of.”

“Has anyone...talked to you, yet?”

Keith had a feeling he might still be too asleep for this conversation, especially when Allura made a hissing shush noise from behind him. “Uhh, I’m pretty sure everyone talked to me at some point yesterday.” Both of them jolted up at the sound of the lounge doors opening and Shiro entering the room, and when Pidge and Allura left after sharing several looks between them, Keith suddenly felt like he was 12 years old again, back at the Garrison and very much in trouble.

“How are you feeling?” Shiro asked, as if this was going to be a perfectly normal conversation, and Keith decided to humor him for a bit.

“Honestly? Hungry.”

“Well, good,” Shiro smiled, but his face did that thing where his left eye squinted just a little bit more than his right, which Keith knew from experience meant Shiro was nervous about something. “Hunk made some breakfast, or I guess lunch now. I was just hoping I could talk to you about something first.”

“Yeah, Shiro. Of course you can.” Shiro motioned for Keith to join him on the couch, fiddling with one of the discarded blankets as he did.

“Lance said he told you, but we, the last month we thought…”

“I’m so sorry, Shiro.”

“It isn’t your fault,” he said firmly. “Things just seem a bit…”

“Unreal? Unstable? Believe me, I know how that feels,” Keith tried to lighten the mood a bit with a grin, but Shiro just dragged Keith to his side, halfway onto his lap, and this close Keith could hear how unsteady Shiro’s breathing was. “I’m here now. You found me. I’m ok.” And Shiro was definitely crying now, tightening his hold on Keith as if that could keep him safe from the war raging around them.

Maybe it could.

“Sorry,” Shiro managed eventually, though he didn’t seem inclined to let go anytime soon. Keith really was hungry, but he’d also just had no human contact for a month, so if Shiro wanted to hug on the couch Keith wasn’t about to stop him.

“I get it, Shiro. Seriously. You don’t have to apologize.”

“Anyway," he said after a few moments, "the thing I wanted to talk to you about. I - we, all of us. We want you to leave the Blade.”

Keith sat back as far as Shiro’s hold would let him, looking up at his face in shock. “What? Shiro, I can’t do that. I know it’s more dangerous than Voltron, but we’re doing good work. I took down an entire battlecruiser alone on that last mission and yeah, I kind of fucked up with the exit, but like I said you found me. It worked out in the end.”

“Worked out in the end?”

Keith cringed, knowing that had been the wrong thing to say the moment it came out of his mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, Xini wasn't exactly a spa trip yeah, but. I’m ok.”

“You wouldn’t have been ok if it weren’t for us. It wasn’t the Blade of Marmora that figured out where you were and fetched you.” And Keith would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about that. The Blade operated on their mission above the individual motto and Keith always hated it, but it was especially a horrible feeling when _you_ were the individual that gets written off and left behind. “Sorry. I’m sorry- shit, Keith, I don’t mean to fight with you. I’m not angry at you, I’m frustrated at the Blade and at Kolivan, and I’m scared. Don’t think Matt hasn’t told us what you tried to pull at Naxzela. This is the second time we’ve almost lost you after you joined the Blades; I really don’t want to test fate and try for a third time.”

“Hey, I never said I was happy with the Blades. Just that I was useful. I can’t just sit around and help Coran fire some lasers while all of you are actually risking your lives in the fighting. You can’t ask me to do that, Shiro.”

“You could have the Black Lion aga-”

“ _No_.”

“The Red Lion?” Shiro needled.

“Listen, I. Yeah, I miss the lions, a lot, and I miss Voltron and all of you, but this makes sense. There are six pilots and five lions and I’m the only one of us right now who can do something not-Voltron for the war effort.” He slumped back into Shiro’s shoulder with a sigh. “I mean it, I really miss you guys, and I’m always going to be grateful that you went looking for me, and yeah I’m not really happy with the Blades but I can’t just - I can’t just _not fight in a war_ because I’m a little unhappy, Shiro. If everyone had that thought, Pidge and Matt would be out looking for their dad, and Lance and Hunk would be back on earth with their families. You'd be home with Adam," he finished in a whisper.

“There’s a difference between the other Paladins giving up being near their families for the good of the universe and you…”

“Giving up being near my family for the good of the universe?” Keith finished with a wry grin. “If anything I'm better off than they are, at least I know where my family is and generally what you're all doing." Keith wasn't sure he'd ever seen Shiro look so helpless.

"At least stay here a while before you jump right back into missions. A few days; a couple weeks, a year or two. I know you’re still tired, I can’t remember the last time you slept this late."

“Fine,” Keith tried to sulk but knew he was ruining it with a smile; he could never actually turn down Hunk’s cooking and the chance to show Lance up in a swordfight, and also he’d gotten sort of attached to one of Pidge’s fuzzy caterpillars the last time he’d visited and he wanted to see how Tater-Tot was doing. “But don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, Shiro. You’re hoping I’ll change my mind if I stay here long enough, and it’s not going to work.”

"No idea what you're suggesting," Shiro replied, staring innocently up at the ceiling. "Now come on, there’s French toast waiting for you."

* * *

They mostly hadn’t brought up the conversation again, but when Kolivan sent them a message, not so much asking when Keith was going to be back but informing him he was slated for a mission that evening, they already knew what Keith had decided. The rest of them walked with him to the hangar, Hunk stuffing muffins into Keith’s bag on the way, Shiro’s arm around Keith’s shoulders, and Keith trying to convince himself this was for the best.

“You’re really sure about this?” Pidge asked as they reached the hangar.

“Yeah, this is, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” If he said it enough times, maybe he’d believe it. Shiro tightened his arm around his shoulders, and Keith thought for a moment that he was going to start crying again.

“I want daily video calls when you’re not on a mission,” Shiro said instead. “And I mean video, I need to be able to see you to make sure you haven’t injured yourself.”

“Allura, you’re a princess, can’t you command him to stay?” Lance whined.

“I’m not going to do that. I’m being quite selfish about it, but I understand. I felt exactly the same way before I started piloting the Blue Lion - I hated having all of you risk your lives piloting Voltron while I sat in the safety of the castle. So, while I cannot pretend to be pleased with the Blade of Marmora's approach to rescue missions, if this is where Keith believes he’ll do the best work for the war effort then I support him.”

“Thank you, Allura,” Keith started, but then she held up a hand, a strange gleam in her eye.

“However, I’ve spoken with Kolivan, and I think we might have a compromise. We would like to make Keith the official liaison between the Blade of Marmora and Voltron.”

“Ok, but what does that mean?” Shiro asked.

“That sounds a lot like diplomacy. Keith’s not a diplomat, Allura,” Hunk said.

“I’m really not.”

“I’m well aware, thank you,” Allura said with a quirked eyebrow, probably remembering that disastrous honorary feast the Quytinians had thrown them while Keith had still been the Black Paladin. “Largely what it means is that Keith will continue to go on missions with the Blade, but his home base, so to speak, will be with us, and if we need an extra person on a mission Keith will be the one to accompany us, unless he’s on another mission at the time. He’ll also be updating us on the Blade’s plans and successes, and them on ours.”

“So, Blade agent by day, castleship denizen by night?” Pidge suggested.

“Won’t that be a waste of time and resources? For me to come back here after every mission?” He really didn’t want to end up being a burden for them, even as a very, _very_ large part of him was screaming at him to accept this offer for the gift it was.

“I’m a little insulted that you think I can’t open a few wormholes every now and then for you,” Allura deadpanned, but there was something in her eyes that said _I understand, please let me do this for you_.

And, ok. Keith was only so strong.

“Then um, fine, I guess?” At which point Pidge, Lance, and Hunk dogpiled on top of him in the middle of the hangar, shouting about boardgames and Thai food and whatever Monsters and Mana was supposed to be. He shot a pleading look toward Shiro and Allura, who were both hanging off the doorframe looking like they’d sooner join them than try to break up the impromptu rugby scrum, so Coran ended up being the only helpful one.

“Keith does actually need to get back to the Blades,” Coran reminded them. “He’ll be here again in a few days and we can have him roll a character then.”

“Roll a...what?”

“Oh, Keith, you should be a monk, we need a monk!” Pidge yelled as she pulled him up. “I’ll help you build the best monk.”

“Ok, but can’t you picture Keith as the most deadpan bard you’ve ever seen?” Hunk asked.

“I don’t understand anything that’s happening right now.”

“We’ll explain it when you’re back,” Shiro promised, nudging him toward the Galra speeder waiting for him.

“I feel like a kid with divorced parents,” Keith grumbled, trying to turn his head away so Shiro didn’t see how widely he was smiling. Going by Shiro’s expression, he was pretty sure it hadn’t worked.

“Be safe,” Shiro said. “And if Kolivan wants to complain about anything just tell him that you’ll have Lance yell at him again.”

He didn’t have much time to think about everything, back with the Blades. There was a mission brief and before that Surungar wanted to spar him and make sure he was up for everything after his “ordeal.” If Kolivan had seemed ever-so-slightly apologetic in the dining hall and offered Keith the last piece of the weird blue jell-o stuff he could never remember the name of but that tasted like chocolate, well, Keith wasn’t sure what to make of that.

It was surreal, coming back to the Castleship after his mission (a miserable, 50-varga-long reconnaissance mission that he’d spent most of hiding in a vent because he was the only Blade small enough to fit), and just the slightest bit disappointing that only Allura and Coran were waiting for him in the hangar. But once Keith made it past the bay doors it was to find that Lance had drawn him a hot bath and Hunk had made something that was very nearly chicken curry soup and Pidge had queued up Keith’s favorite Altean comedy (according to Allura and Coran this was actually supposed to be some classic drama, but something about the subtitles just didn’t convey that message). When Keith fell asleep ten minutes into the movie he half-woke up to Shiro covering him with a blanket and slipping a pillow under his head. He’d meant what he’d told Shiro - there was a sense of belonging here, one that he had only vague memories of experiencing back on earth and certainly didn’t get with the Blades.

There was still a war outside the castle walls, and all of them were on the frontlines. But for now, Keith was content, surrounded by his family and drifting off to Pidge and Coran arguing about the protagonist’s motives.

He could handle whatever came next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://postcardsfromtheoryland.tumblr.com/) ! (I get lonely)
> 
> There are some other WIPs in the works, but my dissertation is currently kicking my ass, so I'm not sure when they'll be in a fit state to be posted, but SOME DAY.


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